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May 9, 2008

Green Bay perch fishery population promising

By Jody Korch
EagleHerald, Marinette
MARINETTE, Wis. (AP) – The July sunlight illuminating clouds of countless fingerlings near the Menominee River mouth last summer was a great sign for the Green Bay perch fishery.
Fyke net tests conducted by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources confirmed that the perch spawning class of 2007 was indeed a good one – the second-highest since 1988, in fact.
The perch population collapse of the 1990s is becoming a distant bad memory.
Anglers off Oconto Park 1 have been reaping the rewards of the 2003 spawning class – the highest in the last 20 years.
“It’s looking favorable,” said Mike Donofrio, Peshtigo fisheries supervisor with the DNR.
In 2001, in response to drastically declining perch populations, the Natural Resources Board dropped the daily bag limit from 25 to 10, and slashed the annual commercial fishing harvest of perch from 200,000 pounds to 20,000 pounds.
Mark Maricque, a fifth generation commercial fisherman from Green Bay, said the bay perch population does fluctuate, and has recovered.
“I never felt it was as low as the department said it was,” Maricque said.
The daily bag limit for Green Bay perch between May 20 and March 15 has since been raised 15 per day. That could go up again in the not too distant future.
“I tend to think in the next five years it might go back up to 25,” Donofrio said.
The commercial fishing quota, now 60,000 pounds, is shared annually among all anglers.
Maricque anticipates an increase in the annual quota from 60,000 to 100,000 pounds when the next license year begins July 1. He is hopeful the 200,000-pound quota will be subsequently restored.
“Right now department policy is a 50-50 split between the sport and commercial harvest,” he said, adding that the 100,000-pound commercial quota is significantly below a 50-50 split.
Maricque emphasized that the commercial quota figure is misleading because it is a sum of all harvests by each commercial fisherman on the bay.
Changes to bag limits and commercial harvest quotas would require approval from the NRB and Legislature.
Donofrio cautioned that the perch boon days of the late-1980s and early 1990s at angler destinations such as Dykesville may never return.
“It’s not going back to 15 to 20 years ago to where everybody had phenomenal success,” Donofrio said. “We had a high bag limit, we had a high commercial quota. There weren’t enough strong year classes out there. Eventually it reaches the point where they can’t sustain the harvest.
“It’s slowly coming back,” Donofrio said.
Fish biologists gauge perch spawning classes by setting a double-ended fyke net off Marinette’s Little Tail Point each year as soon as the ice goes out, and then counting the netted fish before releasing them.
A variety of factors affect spawning success, such as water temperatures, wind currents during hatching, the abundance of food and predation.
The ever-changing dynamics of exotic species invading the Great Lakes also affects perch populations. The misnamed white perch, one of those exotic species and actually a member of the bass family, is thought to compete for the same food as yellow perch.
Maricque believes white perch were largely responsible for the decline in perch numbers.
“The issue with what the department saw as a low population, I contend was caused by an exotic invader – namely white perch,” Maricque said. “Whatever the reason, when their population declined, the yellow perch population was right back up again.”
White perch numbers are on the decline in the bay, Donofrio said.
The recent discovery of viral hemorrhagic septicemia, a wide-ranging fish-killing disease in the Great Lakes, may well impact perch populations.
“The effect is unknown,” according to Donofrio. “We could see some issues this year. Will there be possibly in the next few years thousands of fish dead? Yes. It is impacting that species (perch), and I expect there to be a loss of fish. To what degree? We don’t know.”

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